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Yo Ho! Yo Ho! We'll Blow the Man Doowwn! (article, 1935)
Being an Account of the University Glee Club (all men) by its President, ''RIAL N. ROSE, ''Basso There are just two things that are absolutely required of a man who wishes to join the University of Virginia Glee Club. He must be enrolled at the University, and he must be able to carry a tune. Sacrifices made by members are: from two to three evening hours a week, devoted to practice; and a certain amount of money, not large, which covers the dues assessment. Members gain many advantages. There are the various trips to cities and schools for the out-of-town concerts; there are dances and parties; there is training in singing and in sight-reading, given by the Club's widely recognized leader, Professor Harry Rogers Pratt, and by his assistant, John Grier Varner, Jr.; there is ample opportunity for the specially talented to gain experience in solo spots; there is an unlimited amount of pleasure to be derived through social contact with the fifty or sixty members of the Club; and, greatest of all, there is that indefinable feeling, never forgotten by one who has experienced it, of being one of a group of men united in singing the music they know and love--each doing his part in giving the audience "a treat." But here I am talking about the thrill of Glee Club performances, already, when it is almost certain that by this time forty-nine of every fifty men just entering college will want to ask, "Just what is a college Glee Club, anyway?" It's the question I asked on entering school, and it's a hard one to answer, for, you see, Glee Clubs change from year to year, even from month to month. One used to think of mandolins and nasal quartets "rend-ering" Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Fortunately it's something else now. In answering the question, I want, in the first place, to talk about male choruses. Have you ever heard the Don Cossacks, or the male section of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, or Fred Waring's Glee Club, or the Hampton Institute singers? I know you've heard one of them--you must have--and maybe all. When you heard the wonderful effects the voices made, you said to yourself, "That's surely the greatest music in the world!" You were right. It was the plain truth. Men's choruses ''do ''make the greatest music. Orchestras, whether jazz or symphonic, can't touch them, for, after all, the instruments in an orchestra only imitate human voices. They may do it well, but still they aren't the real thing. Now, a College Glee Club, in these days, is a very ambitious organization. It attempts to combine the best of all these various kinds of music. The religious and folk music of the negroes and Cossacks appear on the same programs with the popular and "pretty" music of the "Pennsylvanians," and with the strong, soul-stirring music of the great composers. In 1934-35, for instance, the University Glee Club sang music of America, England, Germany, Russia, Finland, the Netherlands, and the Latin Church, while a quartet sang negro songs, on a typically arranged program. And, not content with merely singing the music, we attempted to perform it nearly as possible in the various styles of the peoples it represented. All this is rather discouraging to a young man who likes to sing, but who has little experience. Yet there are hundreds of young men with little experience who like to sing coming to the University each fall, and the Glee Club always absorbs some of them. Lack of experience is never a handicap. As I said at the beginning of this article, all one needs is to be able to carry a tune. To be sure, men discover, each year, that Glee Club is teaching them to read music and to sing better, but a knowledge of sight-reading is not a requirement. Did you know that, in those four famous groups of men singers that I mentioned, very few have trained voices? It's a fact. One doesn't need training to be a satisfactory chorus singer. It is never the individual voices, but rather the combination of voices that produces beautiful tones. Serge Jaroff or Fred Waring or Professor Pratt would tell you they'd rather have willing men with fair voices who like to sing, than lazy men with good voices who won't sing. So, if you like to sing, and can carry a tune, come to the Glee Club try-outs the week after fraternity rushing is over. There will be a few vacancies in the Club to be filled this year. Gallery 1935-uvamag-cover.png 1935-uvamag-1.png 1935-uvamag-2.png References * Category:Articles Category:1935 Category:Glee Club of the 1930s Category:Collection of Tim Jarrett